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Applied Linguistics in its disciplinary context

Article  in  Australian Review of Applied Linguistics · September 2010

DOI: 10.2104/aral1014

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Applied linguistics in its disciplinary context
Anthony J. Liddicoat
RCLC, University of South Australia

Australia’s current attempt to develop a process to evaluate the quality of research (Excellence in
Research for Australia – ERA) places a central emphasis on the disciplinary organisation of academic
work. This disciplinary focus poses particular problems for Applied Linguistics in Australia. This
paper will examine Applied Linguistics in relation to this issue of discipline in two ways. First, it will
examine ways in which Applied Linguistics has articulated for itself its disciplinary nature. In most
formulations of the focus of Applied Linguistics, the emphasis has not been on identifying a discipline,
but rather on identifying an area of focus. Such formulations necessarily cover a very diverse range of
research methods, theories, etc. This approach can be seen as one of emphasising diversity and
breadth within the field. Other attempts have been made to characterise Applied Linguistics in more
discipline-like terms. Such broad characterisations however conceal a high degree of internal diversity.
Applied Linguistics does not appear to be a “discipline” but rather an interdisciplinary field of enquiry.
Second, the paper will examine some possible implications of the diversity of Applied Linguistics for
how it is positioned through the ERA process.

Introduction
The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) process is constructed in terms of academic
“disciplines” as organising categories for research and all research is understood primarily in
terms of its inclusion in a discipline:
The unit of evaluation for ERA is the research discipline for each eligible
institution. (ARC, 2008, p. 2)
ERA is a disciplinary research assessment exercise. (ARC, 2008, p. 3)
In designating disciplines as its core area of focus, ERA is locating the process of research
evaluation within a broader conceptualisation of the nature of discipline. This paper will
discuss some issues in understanding discipline as an organising category in academic work
in general and then review how Applied Linguistics has been understood as a discipline by
Applied Linguistics. It will then examine how the notion of discipline is being understood
within the ERA process and discuss some of the consequences that this has for Applied
Linguistics in Australia in the context of ERA.

Disciplines as constructs of academic work

Disciplines have historically been understood as observable categories for understanding the
organisation of the process of research, teaching and other aspects of scholarship, as “means
and techniques for scrutinising the world and producing knowledge that is both new and
valid” (Appadurai, 1996, p. 32). The idea of discipline is a highly politicised, ideological
framing of the nature of academic work and identification of an area of academic work as a
discipline is not simply a categorisation of activity but an ideological construction of its place
with the academy.
To call a field a ‘discipline’ is to suggest that it is not dependent on mere doctrine
and that its authority does not derive from the writings of an individual or a
 school, but rather from generally accepted methods and truths. (Shumway &
Messer-Davidow, 1991, p. 202)
Disciplinarity, therefore, has had tied to it a sense of competence and authority within
academic practice. It has been a categorisation of academic work which implies standards of
rigour in theory and practice which are enforced on members of the discipline by members of
the discipline:
A discipline is, above all, a community based on inquiry and centered on
competent investigators. It consists of individuals who associate in order to
facilitate intercommunication and to establish some degree of authority over the
standards of that inquiry (Geiger, 1986, p. 29).
Disciplines, according to Geiger therefore have had two key functions which are achieved
through the association of academics. The first function is to enable communication about
knowledge in areas of common interest, or disciplines as discourse communities in Swales’
(1992) terms. The second function is to allow for regulation, for delimiting who can be said
to be a practitioner of a particular discipline and what constitutes appropriate practice of the
discipline (c.f. Parker, 2002). This means that disciplines can be characterised by processes of
association and dissociation: that is forces which lead to grouping together of academics in
order to constitute the practice of the discipline and forces which lead to separating those who
practice the discipline from those who do not:
The intellectual eco-system has with time been carved up into ‘separate’
institutional and professional niches through continuing processes of boundary-
work designed to achieve an apparent differentiation of goals, methods,
capabilities and substantive expertise (Gieryn, 1983, p. 783).
That is, disciplines have tended to construct disciplinary knowledges as specialised and
discrete so that disciplines come to be seen as inherently bounded areas of enquiry.
Disciplines are a form of demarcation of academic territory and claims of ownership of
domains of enquiry. One concomitant outcome of the territoriality of disciplines is that those
disciplines which are seen as having closely defined boundaries tend to be seen as more
coherent than those which do not:
Impermeable boundaries…are in general a concomitant of tightly knit,
convergent disciplinary communities and an indicator of the stability and
coherence of the intellectual fields they inhabit. Permeable boundaries are
associated with loosely knit, divergent academic groups and signal a more
fragmented, less stable and comparatively open-ended epistemological structure
(Becher, 1989, pp. 37-38).
As bounded categories, disciplines become discrete units of organisation which become
available for administrative purposes: “a discipline is at bottom nothing more than an
administrative category” (Jencks & Riesman, 1968, p. 523). That is, the boundaries around
academic work, which result from processes of identification and differentiation in the
grouping of academics around fields of knowledge, come to be used for other purposes. In
this context, the idea that disciplines function to regulate standards of academic work
becomes translated into the idea of the discipline as unit of evaluation and the tools of
evaluation available for the discipline to regulate access become the means of regulating the
discipline itself: le regard hiérarchique, la sanction normalisatrice et leur combinaison dans
un procédure qui leur est spécifique, l’examen.” (Foucault, 1975, p. 201).1 ERA in this sense
is the application of the examination to disciplines themselves.
Applied linguistics as a discipline
The scope of Applied Linguistics as an academic field
It is a commonplace of writing on Applied Linguistics to observe that the field is difficult to
define (see for example Brumfit, 1997; V. Cook, 2006; Davies, 2007; Grabe, 2002; Kaplan,
2002; Sarangi & van Leeuwen, 2003; Widdowson, 2005). The reasoning for this has been
that Applied Linguistics permits a broad frame of activity and that this breadth makes
definition difficult. Attempts at definition tend to identify an area of focus for Applied
Linguistics work, which is developed in broad, macro-level terms:
theoretical and empirical investigation of real world problems in which language
is a central issue (Brumfit, 1997, p. 93)
problems in the world in which language is implicated (G. Cook, 2002, p. 5)
a practice-driven discipline that addresses language based problems inreal world
contexts (Grabe, 2002, p. 10).
Such attempts at definition focus on two core elements of what is seen as constituting
work in Applied Linguistics: that it is concerned with language and with problems which
exist in the real world. For Grabe (2002), this combination of language and real world
problems is the constituent feature of Applied Linguistics as a discipline although he defends
the disciplinarity of Applied Linguistics in a number of other ways, largely related to sense of
professional identity and practices of communication and organisation. Such general
formulations of the nature of Applied Linguistics necessarily cover a very diverse range of
research methods, theories, etc. and indicate little about the nature of Applied Linguistics
except at the most general level. In working through the consequences of understanding a
field of academic work in such a broad way, two competing approaches can be determined:
an approach which emphasises and encapsulates diversity and one which seeks to restrict and
focus the scope.

Adult language learning Language and the media

Child language Language contact and language change
Communication in the professions Language for special purposes
Contrastive linguistics and error analysis Language planning
Discourse analysis Learner autonomy in language learning
Educational technology and language Lexicography and lexicology
learning
Evaluation, assessment, and testing Literacy
Foreign language teaching methodology and Mother tongue education
teacher education
Forensic linguistics Psycholinguistics
Immersion education Rhetoric and stylistics
Interpreting and translating Second language acquisition
Language and business Sign language
Language and ecology Language and gender
Language and education in multilingual
settings
Table 1: AILA Scientific Commissions
 An obvious expression of the trend to promote diversity in Applied Linguistics can be
seen in the large number of Scientific Commissions established by the International
Association of Applied Linguistics (Table 1).2 This list demonstrates a wide range of
activities which have been included under the umbrella of Applied Linguistics but also shows
that the list, which has expanded over time, is not a coherent organisation of work in Applied
Linguistics. Many of the areas of focus overlap and some of the areas listed, such as
Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics and Lexicography, are commonly considered to be
independent field of research outside the context of Applied Linguistics.
The AILA listing can be seen as an “ostensive definition” (Davies, 2007, p. 1) creating
an impression of the scope and nature of the field without seeking to constrain or limit the
possibilities of the field. The list of Scientific Commissions is the result of organic growth of
areas of interest among groups of people who consider themselves as having a professional
identity which is encapsulated within the ambit of AILA. That is, this list of areas of focus is
an ad hoc product, which is neither definitive nor exhaustive.3 In understanding such
constructions of diversity, it is necessary to see the scope of Applied Linguistics as a social
product of association not as a form of designed coherence. Spolsky (2005) sees the
relationship between the various components of this diversity as somewhat tenuous, with
Applied Linguistics not so much as a discipline but as a “cover term for a sizable group of
semi-autonomous disciplines” (p.36). That is, there is an issue within Applied Linguistics
understood as diverse practices for engaging with language problems in real world settings
about how the various ways of working interrelate. Sarangi and van Leeuwen (2003) see this
interrelationship in terms of communities of practice is which Applied Linguistics is a
community of communities made up of groupings with different objects of study and using
different analytic frameworks. That is, the scope of Applied Linguistics is associative, it is
the result of sets of communities of practice which enter into contact with some large sense of
shared enterprise. This is a view of discipline, if in fact it can be so called, in which
boundaries are not established and enforced and membership is not regulated except by the
desire for association. For Rampton (1997) the diverse nature of Applied Linguistics is
relatively unstructured and composed of fleeting associations of differentiated others in
dialogue around language:
..an open field, in which those those inhabiting or passing through simply show a
common commitment to the potential value of dialogue with people who are
different (Rampton 1997:14)
Appadurai (1996)makes the point that diversity is not simply plurality but the organisation of
plurality: “the economy of diversity is a managed economy” (p. 25). In at least some
formulations of Applied Linguistics as a diverse focus on language problems in the real world,
the notion of Applied Linguistics as a managed economy is not obvious.
The construction of Applied Linguistics as a highly diverse, organically assembled,
open field of enquiry is rejected by some Applied Linguistics (for example Davies, 2007;
Widdowson, 2005). For Davies (2007)such openness to diversity in understanding the scope
of Applied Linguistics risks its trivialisation as a “science of everything” (Davies, 2007, p. 3).
While not rejecting diversity per se, they reject unbounded, unstructured diversity, typically
for reasons which reflect concerns for the coherence and regulation of the discipline:
The trouble with such views is that they offer no help in constructing introductory
syllabuses in applied linguistics for initiates and they lack clarity as to how a
determination can be made on those initiates success in demonstrating that they
should be admitted to the profession (Davies, 2007, p. 2).
 In constructing a narrower focus for Applied Linguistics, the core reference point is
understood as language teaching. That is Applied Linguistics is principally an intellectual
field which is concerned with language teaching, broadly understood (Bell, 1981; Davies,
2007; McDonough, 2002; Widdowson, 2005). One of the central arguments in favour of
Applied Linguistics as language teaching is historical. Early formulations of Applied
Linguistics were focused on language education. Grabe (2002), in his historical synopsis of
Applied Linguistics defines the scope of the discipline in the 1950s as second language
education, with some extension into first language literacy and language arts. He traces the
beginning of the expansion in the focus of Applied Linguistics beyond issues relating to
education to the 1970s and escalating beyond that time. Thus, in many discussions of Applied
Linguistics, Corder’s (1973) view of Applied Linguistics as focusing on language teaching,
including speech therapy, translation and language planning is taken as the articulation of the
target of Applied Linguistics (for example Davies, 2007; Grabe, 2002).
This more restricted view of Applied Linguistics as language teaching indicates a
principled approach to determining disciplinary boundaries and produces a view of a
discipline with greater methodological and epistemological unity than is found in the more
elaborated, diverse construction. However, such restriction means that many people who
profess to be doing Applied Linguistics will not find their work represented within the narrow
view. Grabe (2002) proposes accommodating the diversity of Applied Linguistics by
proposing the idea of a core and a periphery within the discipline, with the core equating with
language education and related areas and the periphery consisting of everything else. 4
Spolsky (1978) however has proposed a different way of understanding the place of language
teaching in relation to the diversity of the field by proposing that the investigation of
language education and related fields be considered as Educational Linguistics, effectively a
subset of Applied Linguistics – that is as a type rather than a core. In face of the obvious
diversity of the practice of contemporary Applied Linguistics, the questions it addresses and
the methods it employs, attempts to formulate specific statements about what is or is not the
focus of Applied Linguistics do not really serve to clarify the disciplinary nature or focus but
rather to attempt to regulate patterns of inclusion and establish ways of validating some areas
of work as more important than others.

The disciplinary base of Applied Linguistics

The debate over the scope of Applied Linguistics is associated with a debate about its
disciplinary nature either board understandings of the field being presented: a narrow
conceptualisation of Applied Linguistics as informed by Linguistics and a broader one of
Applied Linguistics as interdisciplinary. While there may be a tendency for the broad and
narrow views of the disciplinary base and scope of Applied Linguistics to be correlated, the
two issues do not map neatly on to each other but represent cross-cutting ways of
conceptualising the field.
The interdisciplinary view of Applied Linguistics recognises that Applied Linguists
work from the perspective of many different disciplinary paradigms and often cross discipline
boundaries in their work. For some writers, such as Kramsch (2000), Applied Linguistics is
fundamentally interdisciplinary and developed as an interdisciplinary field “[f]ounded in
Europe in the late 1950s by linguists and educators as an interdisciplinary field of research
for the study of all aspects of language use” Kramsch (2000, p. 316). For others, such as
Corder (1973) Applied Linguistics “presupposes linguistics” (p. 7). The debate here is not
simply one between a primarily linguistic and an interdisciplinary focus in research as all
writers on Applied Linguistics see the field as requiring input from many disciplinary
contexts, such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, education, etc. The
debate is one between those who see Applied Linguistics as having no single disciplinary
focus and those who see it as fundamentally based on linguistics and incorporating other
disciplinary areas. For Widdowson (2005) interdisciplinarity is simply not an issue as in his
belief interdisciplinarity is not possible because no interaction of disciplines will leave those
disciplines in their pristine form, one discipline will modify another to accommodate to its
own perspectives.
Formulating Applied Linguistics as being in some way derived from Linguistics, as do
Corder (1973) and Davies (2007), poses a problem for understanding the nature of Applied
Linguistics research at present. The assertion that Applied Linguistics “presupposes
linguistics” would seem to be difficult to maintain in the context of the nature of research
published as “Applied Linguistics” which seems to own little to Linguistics as an informing
discipline, for example work on language maintenance based on the work of Bourdieu
(Bourdieu, 1982).5 It is also problematic in the context of Applied Linguistics education
which in many cases gives little space to Linguistics and often less space to linguistics than to
other informing disciplines, especially education (Murray & Crichton, 2009). This means that
an assertion that Applied Linguistics as a discipline is in some way Linguistics may be a
formulation of the discipline which sees many practitioners of Applied Linguistics
disenfranchised or others unable to recognise their work within the field of Applied
Linguistics. The focus here is on establishing boundaries around areas of work which can be
considered to be most central or theoretically and methodologically valid rather than
explaining the nature of practice.
Widdowson’s (2005) resolution of the debate around disciplinarity is to reject the idea
that Applied Linguistics is not actually disciplinary at all. He argues this on the basis that
Applied Linguistics is concerned with real-world problems and does not involve itself in
abstractions – abstractions being the hall-mark of disciplines. This view involves a somewhat
idiosyncratic view of the nature of discipline and seems to imply an unstructured eclecticism
in adapting theory and methods for disciplines to Applied Linguistics work. However, it also
signals that “discipline” as an organising construct may not be the most appropriate way of
understanding Applied Linguistics.
The debates of scope and disciplinary focus are not necessarily inherently problematic
for Applied Linguistics as disagreement and debate are common within many disciplines.
However, with the advent of ERA, the existence of such debates potentially raise some issues
for Applied Linguistics in Australia.

Disciplines and ERA

As mentioned above, the discipline is the basic unit of evaluation for ERA and even in
recognising the possibility of more complex ways of understanding research work, ERA
nonetheless normalises disciplinarity as the way in which research is to be understood.
ERA is a disciplinary research assessment exercise. As such, interdisciplinary
research will be disaggregated to its discipline components. (ARC, 2008, p. 3).
That is, interdisciplinary and other constructions of academic work as not confined within
impermeable boundaries are disallowed in the ERA process and all academic work is seen as
being capable of disaggregation into disciplines in ways which are not problematic to the
integrity of the work itself. It is a way of seeing interdiciplinarity as an assembly of different
disciplines within a body of work in such a way as each discipline remains discrete and is
unaffected by the process of combining disciplinary perspectives. If Applied Linguistics is
understood as inherently interdisciplinary, drawing on Linguistics, Sociology, Anthropology,
etc., then there are potential issues for the integrity of Applied Linguistics as a field of
research. The problem of discipline within the ERA context is made more complex by the
ways in which the notion of discipline as a bounded entity is understood and identified.
The discipline, as the central unit of research work, is not defined but rather is
understood in terms of a series of labels for particular areas of research:
The unit of evaluation for ERA is the research discipline for each eligible
institution, defined by 4-digit Field of Research (FoR) codes (ARC, 2008, p. 2).
The naming of disciplines is drawn from the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research
Classification (ANZSRC) (Pink & Bascand, 2008). This classification does not use the term
discipline in developing its structuring of research and instead uses the notion of a research
field. In fact, the ANZSRC uses the term discipline in quite different ways in relation to the
codes which are developed and these in turn are different from how the terms are understood
for the purposes of ERA:
The FOR has three hierarchical levels, namely Divisions (at the broadest level),
Groups, and Fields (at the finest level). The Division represents a broad subject
area or research discipline while groups and fields within represent increasingly
detailed dissections of these categories. Divisions, Groups and Fields are assigned
unique 2-digit; 4-digit; and6-digit codes respectively. (Pink & Bascand, 2008, p.
5).
In this case, the two-digit “Division” not the four-digit “Group” which is identified with
disciplines (or broad subject areas). This idea of discipline as the broadest level of
categorisation is repeated and further explained elsewhere in the document.
Each Division is based on a broad discipline. Groups within each Division are
those which share the same broad methodology, techniques and/or perspective as
others in the Division. Each Group is a collection of related Fields of research.
Groups and Fields of research are categorised to the Divisions sharing the same
methodology rather than the Division they support (Pink & Bascand, 2008, p. 12).
Here disciplines are defined in broad terms of shared methodologies, techniques and/or
perspectives. Groups have something in common and disciplines are groupings of like others.
These groupings are primarily methodological, reflecting Shumway and Messer-Davidow’s
(Shumway & Messer-Davidow, 1991, p. 202) idea that disciplines are characterised by
generally accepted methods:
This classification allows R&D activity to be categorised according to the field of
research. In this respect, it is the methodology used in the R&D that is being
considered (Pink & Bascand, 2008, p. 4, emphasis in original).
This means for example that the two-digit classification, Language, Culture and
Communication (20) is claimed as a grouping of: Communication and Media Studies 2001;
Cultural Studies 2002; Language Studies 2003; Linguistics 2004; Literary Studies 2005 and
Other Language, Communication and Culture 2099 on the basis of methodological similarity.
Such a claim would however seem difficult to make for any of the 4-digit Groups let alone
for the two-digit Division.

ERA and Applied Linguistics

The approach adopted to defining disciplines in both ANZSRC and ERA are under theorised
and internally inconsistent. At the same time, they construct a view of disciplines as rigid
constructions with impermeable boundaries, presupposing a form of coherence in theory and
practice which is not always evident within the classifications. When such classifications are
applied to an area of research which is inherently diverse and which is informed by multiple
disciplines, such as Applied Linguistics, there are potential problems.
The first problem which arises is the location of Applied Linguistics within the
ANZSCR framework. At first glance this appears unproblematic as Applied Linguistics is
assigned its own 6-digit field code: 200401 “Applied Linguistics and Educational
Linguistics”. The formulation here is however potentially problematic as the collocation of
“applied” and “educational” linguistics can be read in different ways. One possible reading is
that the inclusion of “educational” privileges an understanding of Applied Linguistics as
being concerned with language teaching and that the grouping is for forms of linguistics that
focus on educational matters. A second possible reading is that “Educational Linguistics” is
to be understood in Spolsky’s (2005) sense and that “Applied Linguistics” is understood as
more broadly than just a language teaching focus.
The 200401 code is also potentially problematic as it embeds Applied Linguistics as a
branch of Linguistics (2004). That is, the debates in Applied Linguistics about its disciplinary
basis is resolved in favour of linguistics. This means that, either research work which does
not draw on linguistics as its disciplinary focus either has to be included in and evaluated as
Linguistics or it has to be removed from Applied Linguistics. Interdiciplinary works is
fundamentally problematic within ERA as such work is disaggregated into its disciplinary
components. However, if the discipline itself is interdisciplinary it is difficult to see what the
process of disaggregation is likely to be or what it achieves.
If one accepts the identification of Applied Linguistics with Linguistics a further
problem emerges, because, if Applied Linguistics is understood in terms of addressing real-
world language problems, it is not a methodological classification, and therefore work
considered as Applied Linguistics could also be validly considered as located with other
forms of Linguistics from which they draw theory and methods. For example, Computational
Linguistics (200402), Discourse and Pragmatics (200403), Laboratory Phonetics and Speech
Science (200404), Language in Culture and Society (Sociolinguistics) (200405) Language in
Time and Space (200406) and Lexicography (200407) are all involved in the AILA Scientific
Commissions given in Table 1 as being forms of Applied Linguistics and it is not difficult to
see that Applied Linguistics research may also investigate Linguistic Structures (200408) or
be included as Linguistics not elsewhere classified (200499). This is not a problem for the
aggregation of this research at the 2004 level, but may mean that work which could be
considered as applied linguistics may be dispersed into other sub-fields for reporting if it is
not multiply coded so that the “applied” dimension is obscured.
Given that even those authors who see Applied Linguistics as primarily connected to
Linguistics see that other disciplines are involved, there is potential for applied linguistic
work to be coded to other 4-digit codes. These codes could be in the Language, Culture and
Communication (20) 2-digit code, that is within the same “discipline” in ANZSRC terms, for
example, Language Studies (2003), Cultural Studies (2002),6 Communication Studies
(2001).7 Alternatively, they could be coded to different 2-digit codes, such as Education (13)
Studies in Human Society (16), Psychology and Cognitive Sciences (17) (See Table 2 for
examples). In this case, the research evaluation process would vary greatly for Applied
Linguistics work encoded to different 2-digit codes as the possible codes cover two separate
clusters – Humanities and Creative Arts and Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences –
which are evaluated using different processes and criteria.
Education (13) Curriculum and LOTE, ESL and TESOL Curriculum and
Pedagogy (1302) Pedagogy (130207)
English and Literacy Curriculum and
Pedagogy (130204)
Specialist Studies in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Education (1303) Education (130301)
Comparative and Cross-Cultural
Education (130302)
Education Assessment and Evaluation
(130303)
Educational Technology and Computing
(130306)
Ethnic Education (130307)
Studies in Human Anthropology (1601) Linguistic Anthropology (160103)
Society (16) Demography (1603) Migration (160303)
Politics and Education Policy (160506)
Administration (1605)
Sociology (1608) Race and Ethnic Relations (160803)
Sociology of Education (160809)
Psychology and Psychology (1701) Educational Psychology (170103)
Cognitive Science Developmental Psychology and Ageing
(17) (170102)
Cognitive Science (1702) Linguistic Processes (170204)
Table 2: Examples of FoR codes with potential relation to Applied Linguistics

The diversity of Applied Linguistics and the narrowly conceived disciplinary focus of
the ERA process, in combination with particular imperatives at individual institutions would
seem to pose two fundamental problems for Applied Linguistics research in Australia. The
first is a problem of visibility. As ERA requires reporting at 2-digit and 4-digit levels only
applied linguistic research recorded against any 6-digit code will be aggregated to a higher
level code in which the contribution of Applied Linguistics and even its existence within a
research grouping will be obscured. The second is a problem of fragmentation. Applied
linguistic research will be recorded in different places and so there will be work which
address language problems in real world contexts that appears in different places and without
necessary connection to similar work. This can be partly alleviated by multiple coding, but
even this cannot ensure that fragmentation will not occur. These two issues have the capacity
to interact in institutional contexts. Under the ERA process, it benefits institutions to
concentrate research and so there is an institutional imperative to code research to where it
will have the most benefit for institutional profiles. This means that, for an institution with a
strong Linguistics profile, but a weak Education profile, it would be most beneficial to code
Applied Linguistics as Linguistics rather as Education. Conversely for institutions with strong
Education profiles but weak Linguistics profiles, it would be more beneficial to code the
same research as Education rather than Linguistics.8 Moreover, given that applied linguists
are located in very different institutional arrangements – Schools of Linguistics, Education,
etc. – these locations may also influence coding practices and publishing choices. The idea of
disciplines as administratively convenient units is likely to be more important than other,
intellectually oriented, ways of understanding disciplines in the current context.
The challenge for Applied Linguistics in Australia under ERA would appear to be in
maintaining a profile for Applied Linguistics as a distinctive area of research, addressing
distinctive research issues and in holding together a sense of a body of research addressing
language problems in real-world contexts in spite of great diversity in methodologies and
disciplinary influences. The debates around Applied Linguistics as a disciplinary area which
characterise Applied Linguistics internationally are significant and important debates and can
be seen as reflecting a significant level of critical awareness around theory and practice in
Applied Linguistics, however these same debates do not articulate well with the rigid
understanding of disciplinarity which currently shapes how research in Australia is
understood.(Widdowson, 2005)

Notes
1. Hierarchical observation, normalising gaze and their combination in a procedure
unique to them, the examination [Authors’ translation].
2. The Scientific Commissions have now been replaced by in the AILA structure by a
smaller number of Research Networks which are conceived as shorter term groupings
of Applied Linguistics work.
3. For example, Pennycook (2001; , 2004) expands beyond the AILA listing to include
issues such as sexuality, identity, ethics, desire, difference, the construction of
Otherness, etc.
4. McDonough (2002) has a similar division into major focuses and secondary focuses of
Applied Linguistics.
5. This debate has been resolved in a significant way in the Francophone world where
linguistique appliquée is considered by many people as too strongly rooted in
Linguistics and is therefore of relatively little use for addressing more complex
questions relating to language education. As a result, there is a clear separation between
linguistique appliquée, a branch of Linguistics, and didactique des langues, an
interdisciplinary field of research focusing on issues of second/foreign language
learning and use (Véronique, 2009).
6. For example, Multicultural, Intercultural and Cross-cultural Studies (200209).
7. For example, Organisational, Interpersonal and Intercultural Communication (200105).
8. This of course applies to those areas where institutions have discretion: book, book
chapter, conference and other publications and grants and may also be affected by the
volume of journal publications which are coded by journal not by publication.

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